There are no accidents in the junk world. The addict is taught again and again exactly what will happen if he does not score for his junk 5
ration. Get up that money or else. And suddenly my habit began to jump and jump. Forty, sixty grains a day. And it still was not enough. And I could not pay.
I stood there with my last check in my hand and realized that it was my last check. I took the next plane to London.
The doctor explained to me that apomorphine acts on the back brain to regulate the metabolism and normalize the blood stream in such a way that the enzyme system of addiction is destroyed over a period of four or five days. Once the back brain is regulated apomorphine can be discontinued and only used in case of relapse.(No one would take apomorphine for kicks. Not one case of addiction to apomorphine has ever been recorded.) I agreed to undergo treatment and entered a nursing home. For the first twenty-four hours I was literally insane and paranoid as many addicts are in severe withdrawal. This delirium was dispersed by twenty-four hours of intensive apomorphine treatment. The doctor showed me the chart. I had received minute amounts of morphine that could not possibly account fort my lack of the more severe withdrawal symptoms such as leg and stomach cramps, fever and my own special symptom, The Cold Burn, like a vast hives covering the body and rubbed with menthol. Every addict has his own special symptom that cracks all control. There was a missing factor in the withdrawal equation – that factor could only be apomorphine. I saw the apomorphine treatment really work. Eight days later I left the nursing home eating and sleeping normally. I remained completely off the junk for two full years – a twelve years record. I did relapse for some months as a result of pain and illness. Another apomorphine cure has kept me off junk through this writing.
The apomorphine cure is qualitatively different from other methods of cure. I have tried them all. Short reduction, slow reduction, cortisone, anthihistaminics, tranquillizers, sleeping cures, tolserol, reserpine. None of these cures lasted beyond the first opportunity to relapse. I can say definitely that I was never metabolically cured until I took the apomorphine cure. The overwhelming relapse statistics from the Lexington Narcotic Hospital have led many doctors to say that addiction is not curable. They use a dolophine reduction cure at Lexington and have never tried apomorphine as far as I know. In fact, this method of treatment has been largely neglected. No research has been done with variations of the apomorphine formula or with synthetics. No doubt substances fifty times stronger than apomorphine could be developed and the side effect of vomiting eliminated. Apomorphine is a metabolic and psychic regulator that can be discontinued as soon as it has done its work. The world is deluged with tranquillizers and energizers but this unique regulator has not received attention. No research has been done by any of the large pharmaceutical companies. I suggest that research with variations of apomorphine and snthesis of it will open a new medical frontier extending far beyond the problem of addiction.
The smallpox vaccine was opposed by a vociferous lunatic group of anti-vaccinationists. No doubt a scream of protest will go up from interested or unbalanced individuals as the junk virus is shot out from under them. Junk is big business; there are always cranks and operators. They must not be allowed to interfere with the essential work of inoculation treatment and quarantine. The junk virus is public health problem number one of the world today. Since Naked Lunch treats this health problem, it is necessarily brutal, obscene and disgusting. Sickness has often repulsive details not for weak stomachs.
Certain passages in the book that have been called pornographic were written as a tract against Capital Punishment in the manner of Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal. These sections are intended to reveal capital punishment as the obscene, barbaric and disgusting anachronism that it is. As always the lunch is naked. If civilized countries want to return to Druid Hanging Rites in the Sacred Grove or 6
to drink blood with the Aztecs and feed their Gods with blood of human sacrifice, let them see what they actually eat and drink. Let them see what is on the end of that long newspaper spoon. As I write I have almost completed a sequel to Naked Lunch. A mathematical extension of the Algebra of Need beyond the junk virus. Because there are many forms of addiction I think that they all obey basic laws. In the words of Heisenberg: 'This may not be the best of all possible universes but it may well prove to be one of the simplest.' If man can see. Post Script... Wouldn’t You?
And speaking Personnally and if a man speaks any other way we might as well start looking for his Protoplasm Daddy or Mother Cell... I Don’t Want to Hear Any More Tired Old Junk Talk And Junk Con... The same things said a million times and more and there is no point in saying anything because NOTHING Ever Happens in the junk world. Only excuse for this tired death route is THE KICK when the junk circuit is cut off for the nonpayment and the junk- skin dies of junk-lack and overdose of time and the Old Skin has forgotten the skin game simplifying the junk cover the way skins will... A condition of total exposure is precipitated when the Kicking Addict cannot choose but see smell and listen... Watch out for the cars... It is clear that junk is a Round-the-World-Push-an-Opium-Pellet-with- Your-Nose-Route. Strictly for Scarabs – stumble bum junk heap. And as such report to disposal. Tired of seeing it around.
Junkies always beef about The Cold as they call it, turning up their black coat collars and clutching their withered necks... pure junk con. A junky does not want to be warm, he wants to be Cool-Cooler- COLD. But he wants The Cold like he wants His Junk – NOT OUTSIDE where it does him no good but INSIDE so he can sit around with a spine like a frozen hydraulic jack... his metabolism approaching Absolute ZERO. TERMINAL addicts often go two months without a bowel move and the intestines make with sit-down-adhesions -–Wouldn't you? --requiring the intervention of an apple corer or its surgical equivalent... Such is life in The Old Ice House. Why move around and waste TIME?
Room for One More Inside, Sir.
Some entities are on thermodynamic kicks. They invented thermodynamics... Wouldn’t you? And some of us are on Different Kicks and that’s a thing out in the open the way I like to see what I eat and vice versa mutatis mutandis as the case may be . Bill’s Naked Lunch Room... Step right up... Good for young and old, man and bestial. Nothing like a little snake oil to grease the wheels and get a show on the track Jack. Which side are you on? Fro-Zen Hydraulic? Or you want to take a look around with Honest Bill?
So that’s the World Health Problem I was talking about back in The Article. The Prospect Before Us Friends of MINE. Do I hear muttering about a personal razor and some bush league short con artist who is known to have invented
